Tara Elementary third-graders win worldwide competition

For once, Tara Elementary School students weren’t getting shooed away from their computer screens.

Twenty third-graders in Charles Rogalla’s class spent the month of April trying to answer as many questions about math and science questions every day as they could. They were competing in the IXLSpring Learning Showdown along with about 3,900 other classrooms around the world.

IXL Learning is an online, supplementary program that lets students quiz themselves on different topics, including math and language arts. Rogalla has been using the program in his class for three years, but it’s the first time they’ve competed in the showdown.

“The kids really enjoy it, to work for a goal,” Rogalla said.

The competition was based on how many problems and questions the class answered on average — so every student had to pull his or her own weight to keep the class in the ranking. Rogalla can monitor when students are

working on the site, and could see them working after school to hike up their numbers.

“I could see kids getting online at 9 p.m.,” he said.

Throughout the competition, his class always seemed about 15,000 questions behind the other top teams. And when the results actually were released, he and his class almost forgot because they were taking iReady tests. When they checked the score, “the room went crazy,” Rogalla said.

“When we won, we felt surprised — we lost our minds,” said Breana Nasser.

His class answered an average of 186,820 problems in April, earning them first place out of a world full of classrooms. That's about 9,341 questions per student.
Their prize? A $250 gift card the class decided to use on a pizza party for the entire third grade.

“I’m very proud of their hard work,” Rogalla said. “It was a tough challenge, but they never gave up.”